


Alone Even in a Crowd

by karrenia_rune



Category: Andromeda, Firefly
Genre: Community: multiverse5000, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a chance meeting becomes a meeting of the minds; in a way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

.  
Disclaimer: Andromeda and the characters who appear here or are mentioned belong to Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Productions etc; they are not mine. Firefly and its characters are the creation of Joss Whedon, the CW etc. Written for the 2010 Multiverse 6000 Promptathon. Prompt: Trance Gemini and River Tam : an enigma wrapped up in a riddle #44 exile words: 1460

"Alone, Even in a Crowd" by karrenia

From the very first moment she had come face to face with the indomitable Dylan Hunt and the Andromeda Ascendant, she had known that was where she had belonged, at least, for the present.

The most problematic thing about having an ingrained responsibility to create the perfect possible future was that there were simply too many probabilities to take into consideration.

For example, take the urgent need that pressed upon her to switch her younger, more naive and purpler self with her adult incarnation.

It had seemed the most prudent course of action; for it would not only accomplish the safety of her ship and crew; it would also afford a wider connection with  
multiverse: such as it was.

While Trance could accept the various emotional and even physical responses that her sudden golden and adult incarnation had invoked from the crew: which included shock, blase' grudging acceptance and questioning: And while she could understand their engineer, Seamus Harper's anger; almost; it still hurt her.

They had been friends for so long and she had half hoped, half-expected that he would be the first to come around and accept the new 'Trance' right off the bat.

'Well, thought,' Trance, 'these things take time is all.'

River Tam, on the other hand, felt no such ingrained responsibility,: chiefly because responsibility had not been included in her programming although there would have been no way for her to have been consciously aware of that fact.

It would have been an migraine-inducing headache for just about anyone to predict what might have happened had she remained in the hands of the Alliance. For that way was fraught with an assortment of variables, regrets, fears and could-have, might-have beens.

Not that long ago her brother, Simon Tam, had taken it upon himself to remove both her and himself and damn the consequences. River was a child prodigy, whose brain was subjected to experiments. As a result, she displays schizophrenia and often hears voices. It is later revealed that she is a "reader", one who possesses telepathic abilities.

Simon gave up a highly successful career as a trauma surgeon to rescue her from the Alliance and as a result of this rescue they are both wanted fugitives.

Simon had agreed to join Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew as a paying passenger with River smuggled on board as cargo.

The problem with an plan of that magnitude carried out with the exact same precision that had made him such an excellent doctor was it was only later; that one could appreciate just what those consequences might come back with a vengeance.

River hummed a half-remembered tune that in its pitch and timbre somehow exactly matched the pitch and yaw of the Serenity as it traversed the space lanes at a good clip while clinging to one of the gantries overlooking the cargo bay.

 

Beneath her the activity of the crew going on about their activities continued unabated.   
The cargo was heavy and had come in about a dozen separate containers. The last time something dangerous had come sinuously concealed within a container whose size and shape generally conformed to the length of a human body; Captain Malcolm Reynolds had thrown a fit. Mainly because the person concealed inside one of those crates had been an old friend.

River did not entirely understand the subtler nuances of encountering an old friend who now wished you harm, whether intentionally or not. River, much like her name, often seemed to exist in a constant stream of now; although she was aware of the passage of time on a peripheral level. And even if she were not, she could always ask her brother, Simon Tam, to fill her on the missing details.

The throb of the ship suddenly gave her a sudden wrench in the pit of her stomach even as the ship listed to one side and she could her Jayne and Zoe utter some rather creative curses as they struggled for purchase on the crazily listing deck.

In the back of her mind River wondered what would have cause such an abrupt change in course and speed, and the harmonics of the both the crew's interaction with each other and the ship. It was like a metallic music and it while it lasted she felt it pull herself, or at last an essential essence out of her body, and to somewhere that could only be described as 'Somewhere Else."

 

Encounter

River opened her eyes, even though, in this place, she did not feel as if she possessed a body and if that were true, then they she could not have opened her eyes, but it fit.  
Her deep brown eyes met and held contact with a pair of wide, golden and to her way of thinking, very startled golden ones.

Once the initial shock had subsided, the owner of those golden eyes, blinked and broke the contact taking several involuntary steps backwards.

"What is this place?" River asked

"Not a place, in so many words," the woman with the golden eyes responded, "I guess the best way of explaining it would be to term it a when, or better yet, one of several possibilities. Honestly, I wasn't expecting anyone here."

River shook her head. "I…. I don't understand, realizing that, from a distance, as if it played somewhere outside the confines of the 'nothing place, an invisible orchestra played, she could still her the music that she had been listening until she had been pulled out of her waking body by an irresistible force.

"Did you call me here?" River asked, and in the back of her mind, where she sometimes felt that her brother, Simon, held a secret piece of her heart, she realized that these were not the typical questions that a normal person would ask under the circumstance; then again she had would never really fit the narrow parameters of what most people would consider 'normal, so it hardly signified.

Trance Gemini, the golden-eyed engima, even among those who knew and cared for her the most, shook her head and returned her gaze back upon the dark-eyed, dark-haired waif that had suddenly appeared in the nexus where she went to consider all the various permutations of how to go about creating the most perfect possible future; it was an unlooked for precedent; and one that even she was not entirely certain was either good or bad; and did it really matter.

Instead she grinned. "Yeah, well, I didn't mean to 'call' you at all. By now that you are here, it's nice to have someone else besides me, myself and I, to talk to you. Usually it's just me and my plants."

"Lonely," River murmured, and she glanced around and their narrow and nondescript surroundings. "Having someone to talk to… helps…."

Trance crossed the few steps that separated her from the fragile-seeming but underneath that very fragility was a core of strength that she could sense but not put her finger on…and placed her hands on River's shoulders. "I'll do what I can. I don't make any guarantees, you understand?

River nodded and then asked: If, when…. I go back…will you call me here again. It is not so empty, so cold here in the when of possibilities it has been. The others try to help as they can but it's not the same thing.."  
"I will have to send you back," Trance replied. "It's the nature of the place. Even I am not permitted to spend very much time, sidereal, though it may be, in the Nexus."

"Is that what this place is called?" River asked.

Trance shrugged and then replied, "It's as good a name as any."

River nodded.

Trance gasped as she felt the slender shoulders underneath her hand shake. "You're cold, for someone whose body is not really here. You know, I don't know anything about you and I don't think it really matters, Here, but you're fractured."

"I never meant it to be this way," River said, more harshly than she had intended.

"I'll give you the initial push back to your body, but the rest is up to you. For what it's worth, I wish I could do more to help you, but I get the sneaky suspicion, that like me; sometimes we are both alone, even in a crowd."


	2. Shiny Happy People

"Shiny Happy People" by karrenia

Her head hurt and the inside of her mouth tasted like she’d been force-feed several pairs of Jayne Cobb’s socks after he they’d gone unwashed for a week straight. She rolled over onto her said and tried to focus on her immediate surroundings.

When she felt that she could stand up without falling over immediately afterwards, Kaylee realized that she had been lying atop an exam table in a very spacious medical bay; one that was several times over bigger than the one aboard the Serenity. While she tried to wrap her mind around that fact, it gradually sunk in that she was no longer alone.

The woman who stood across from had skin tinted a not entirely unbecoming shade of pastel lavender, and stood regarding her with polite if intent scrutiny.

“Who are you? Where am I? Stammered Kaylee, wondering if this might be some kind of allocation or a dream, but even in a dream one did not ever feel quite like she’d been beaten up.

For her part, the purple-skinned girl nodded her head and rapidly crossed the distance that separated them. “I understand that this must be difficult for you, I would advise taking several deep breaths until the pain subsides.”

Kaylee did as she was instructed, taking in deep breaths one by one until she felt a bit better; it seemed to help considerably, but she was still disoriented and a bit woozy.

“You never answered my question,” she stated.

“My name is Trance.” You are aboard the Andromeda Ascendant.”

“Is that an Alliance ship?” Kaylee muttered worriedly. She had never been aboard an Alliance vessel, although Malcolm Reynolds had told all of them about them, and his main advice had been to avoid them whenever possible. 

“No, it’s ‘a High-Guard ship,” replied Trance flashing the young human woman a reassuring smile. “And no one’s going to harm you, Kaylee Fyre.”

“How do you know who I am?” Kaylee asked suspiciously, narrowing her eyes and darting glances around the spacious med-bay for something that she could use for as an improvised weapon.

Trance saw the glances but refrained from commenting on them. “I see that I must explain myself.” She giggled. “My friends would be astounded, for I have never been very good at explanations...”

“My head hurt, and I don’t understand what you’re going on about. “

“I am afraid, that I have been quite self-indulgent, to be frank. I have long been something of a dabbler in the possibility of perfect possible futures, or even alternate realties, and I became interested in yours when I came into contact with River Tam.”

“River? What does she have to do with any of this?”

“Nothing substantial, other than that you and River are both ship-mates and, friends?”

“I guess you could say that,” replied Kaylee, hesitantly, ‘but what has that got to me with me, and your, did you say alternate realities?”

“Yes, and don’t worry, I’ll send you back when we’re done here, I just wanted to ask you a few questions about your reality.”

“Great, just great, I’ve landed aboard the good ship crazy,” muttered Kaylee under her breath.

“It does seem that way, every now and again,” replied Trance nodding slowly, as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet and humming a sweet but melancholy melody. “What did you do aboard your ship?

“I was the ship’s engineer,” replied Kaylee.

“Really?” Fascinating, if I didn’t already fear that I’ve tampered with the time-line by bridging you across, I would introduce you to our acting ship’s engineer, Mr. Seamus Harper. I believe he and you would get on famously.”

Kaylee, despite the bizarre nature of the situation and the note quite strange yet serious conversation that she was having with this strange purple-skinned girl, she would have smiled at the thought that the girl was trying to play match-maker. It would have been sweet, under other less weird situations.

“Where did you learn to work with enegines and other; I am sorry, I should have a better mechanical vocabulary after spending so much time in the company of Mr. Harper, but ah, shall we say, sundry equipment.”

“I learned from my father, and the rest of I guess, I more or less learned on the job. It’s something that I’ve always felt a kind of knack for, so it’s all shiny.”

“Admirable,” Trance replied. “I haven’t told any of the others that about the contact I made with your friend, but the contact was both memorable and intriguing, and yes, it is all shiny.”

River, is well, it’s complicated, but I guess you would know that alread,” stated Kaylee,   
“that is if you actually spoke to her.”

“Not actually spoken, so much as a kind of meeting of minds, and, I must say that she is a trouble soul, and old soul in a young body. I can understand why she and those she cares for, or cares for her, find tha actions of those within the organization you call the Alliance so rephrensible.”

“It’s awful what they did to her,” Kaylee replied, with much more heat than she had intended, but the Trance simply nodded and stepped forward. “Please understand, that I meant no harm to you or her, and I in that in that momentary contact, I meant to do more than satisfy my own curoisity. I wanted to help.”

“You wanted to help her?” repated Kaylee in surprise.

“Yes, I hope I did so” at least a little bit. “ 

“I wouldn’t know about that, she’s never really mentioned anything about it.”

“No, well, one can always hope,” replied Trance with a shrug.

“Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument, that’s it’s true, and I’ve actually been pulled into another reality, what happens now.”

“You could always met Mr. Harper. I’m sure he would take to you the way iron takes to a magnet. And you do have so much in common.

“Now, I’m convinced that you are trying to play me, as some kind of trans-dimesnional match-maker. 

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Trance began to say seriously but after a heart beat or two broke into a fit of uncontroablle giggles. When she at last recovered, she said. “I am so sorry, but where we we?”

“Match-making,” Kaylee replied.

“Right, would you be interested, or should I send you back to your own reality.”

“You can do that?’

“I think it was a fluke this time, mainly because of the connection I had with River as a temporal anchor, but otherwise, no, I don’t think it will happen again, so if you want to go, I won’t stop you.”

“Dam Gorram,” muttered Kaylee,”but it sounds like a one-way ticket to me, so then, I say, Yes, send me back, but I do have to say,. Miss Gemini, this has been one of the weirdest yet enjoyable conversations that I’ve had in a long time.”

“Ditto, I believe the expressions is, yes?”

“Yes.”


End file.
